For the millions who downloaded it, that file isn't a crime. It’s a memory of 24-player Rush on Valparaiso , listening to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" over proximity voice chat, with a crack that just worked .
Long live the ISO. Long live the Scene. Do you still have your old Scene releases? Or did you buy the game on Steam before the servers went dark? Let me know in the comments below. Battlefield.Bad.Company.2-RELOADED.iso
EA’s servers were a burning dumpster fire for the first two weeks. Rubber-banding, disconnections, and "Failed to connect to EA Online" errors were the norm. For the millions who downloaded it, that file isn't a crime
An ISO (International Organization for Standardization) image is a perfect sector-by-sector copy of an optical disc. In 2010, physical media was still the king of distribution, even for PC. When you downloaded this 6.5GB file (a massive download on 10Mbps ADSL lines back then), you weren't just getting a folder of ZIPs. You were getting a digital clone of the retail DVD9. Long live the Scene